20 Questions That Could Change Your Life

I rarely repost magazine articles, but I found this fairly poignant now that it's the first month of the year and also things I think of quite often.

20 Questions That Could Change Your Life
Finding the answers starts with posing the right questions—and Martha Beck has 20 to get you started.

By Martha Beck
O, The Oprah Magazine  |  January 18, 2011


1. What questions should I be asking myself?
At first I thought asking yourself what you should be asking yourself was redundant. It isn't. Without this question, you wouldn't ask any others, so it gets top billing. It creates an alert, thoughtful mind state, ideal for ferreting out the information you most need in every situation. Ask it frequently.

2. Is this what I want to be doing?
This very moment is, always, the only moment in which you can make changes. Knowing which changes are best for you comes, always, from assessing what you feel. Ask yourself many times every day if you like what you're doing. If the answer is no, start noticing what you'd prefer. Thus begins the revolution.

3. Why worry?
These two words, considered sincerely, can radically reconfigure the landscape of your mind. Worry rarely leads to positive action; it's just painful, useless fear about hypothetical events, which scuttles happiness rather than ensuring it. Some psychologists say that by focusing on gratitude, we can shut down the part of the brain that worries. It actually works!

4. Why do I like {cupcakes} more than I like {people}?
Feel free to switch out the words in brackets: You may like TV more than exercise, or bad boys more than nice guys, or burglary more than reading. Whatever the particulars, every woman has something she likes more than the somethings she's supposed to like. But forcing "virtues"—trying to like people more than cupcakes—drives us to vices that offer false freedom from oppression. Stop trying to like the things you don't like, and many vices will disappear on their own.

5. How do I want the world to be different because I lived in it?
Your existence is already a factor in world history—now, what sort of factor do you want it to be? Maybe you know you're here to create worldwide prosperity, a beautiful family, or one really excellent bagel. If your impressions are more vague, keep asking this question. Eventually you'll glimpse clearer outlines of your destiny. Live by design, not by accident.

6. How do I want to be different because I lived in this world?
In small ways or large, your life will change the world—and in small ways or large, the world will change you. What experiences do you want to have during your brief sojourn here? Make a list. Make a vision board. Make a promise. This won't control your future, but it will shape it.

7. Are {vegans} better people?
Again, it doesn't have to be vegans; the brackets are for you to fill in. Substitute the virtue squad that makes you feel worst about yourself, the one you'll never have the discipline to join, whether it's ultra-marathoners or mothers who never raise their voices. Whatever group you're asking about, the answer to this question is no.

8. What is my body telling me?
As I often say, my mind is a two-bit whore—by which I mean that my self-justifying brain, like any self-justifying brain, will happily absorb beliefs based on biases, ego gratification, magical thinking, or just plain error. The body knows better. It's a wise, capable creature. It recoils from what's bad for us, and leans into what's good. Let it.

9. How much junk could a chic chick chuck if a chic chick could chuck junk?
I believe this question was originally posed by Lao Tzu, who also wrote, "To become learned, each day add something. To become enlightened, each day drop something." Face it: You'd be better off without some of your relationships, many of your possessions, and most of your thoughts. Chuck your chic-chick junk, chic chick. Enlightenment awaits.

10. What's so funny?
Adults tend to put this question to children in a homicidal-sounding snarl, which is probably why as you grew up, your laughter rate dropped from 400 times a day (for toddlers) to the grown-up daily average of 15. Regain your youth by laughing at every possible situation. Then, please, tell us what's funny—about everyday life, about human nature, even about pain and fear. We'll pay you anything.

11. Where am I wrong?
This might well be the most powerful question on our list—as Socrates believed, we gain our first measure of intelligence when we first admit our own ignorance. Your ego wants you to avoid noticing where you may have bad information or unworkable ideas. But you'll gain far more capability and respect by asking where you're wrong than by insisting you're right.

12. What potential memories am I bartering, and is the profit worth the price?
I once read a story about a world where people sold memories the way we can sell plasma. The protagonist was an addict who'd pawned many memories for drugs but had sworn never to sell his memory of falling in love. His addiction won. Afterward he was unaware of his loss, lacking the memory he'd sold. But for the reader, the trade-off was ghastly to contemplate. Every time you choose social acceptance over your heart's desires, or financial gain over ethics, or your comfort zone over the adventure you were born to experience, you're making a similar deal. Don't.

13. Am I the only one struggling not to {fart} during {yoga}?
I felt profoundly liberated when this issue was raised on Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update." Not everyone does yoga, but SNL reminded me that everyone dreads committing some sort of gaffe. Substitute your greatest shame-fear: crying at work, belching in church, throwing up on the prime minister of Japan. Then know you aren't alone. Everyone worries about such faux pas, and many have committed them (well, maybe not the throwing up on PMs). Accepting this is a bold step toward mental health and a just society.

14. What do I love to practice?
Some psychologists believe that no one is born with any particular talent and that all skill is gained through practice. Studies have shown that masters are simply people who've practiced a skill intensely for 10,000 hours or more. That requires loving—not liking, loving—what you do. If you really want to excel, go where you're passionate enough to practice.

15. Where could I work less and achieve more?
To maximize time spent practicing your passions, minimize everything else. These days you can find machines or human helpers to assist with almost anything. Author Timothy Ferriss "batches" job tasks into his famous "four-hour workweek." My client Cindy has an e-mail ghostwriter. Another client, Angela, hired an assistant in the Philippines who flawlessly tracks her schedule and her investments. Get creative with available resources to find more time in your life and life in your time.

16. How can I keep myself absolutely safe?
Ask this question just to remind yourself of the answer: You can't. Life is inherently uncertain. The way to cope with that reality is not to control and avoid your way into a rigid little demi-life, but to develop courage. Doing what you long to do, despite fear, will accomplish this.

17. Where should I break the rules?
If everyone kept all the rules, we'd still be practicing cherished traditions like child marriage, slavery, and public hangings. The way humans become humane is by assessing from the heart, rather than the rule book, where the justice of a situation lies. Sometimes you have to break the rules around you to keep the rules within you.

18. So say I lived in that fabulous house in Tuscany, with untold wealth, a gorgeous, adoring mate, and a full staff of servants...then what?
We can get so obsessed with acquiring fabulous lives that we forget to live. When my clients ask themselves this question, they almost always discover that their "perfect life" pastimes are already available. Sharing joy with loved ones, spending time in nature, finding inner peace, writing your novel, plotting revenge—you can do all these things right now. Begin!

19. Are my thoughts hurting or healing?
Your situation may endanger your life and limbs, but only your thoughts can endanger your happiness. Telling yourself a miserable mental story about your circumstances creates suffering. Telling yourself a more positive and grateful story, studies show, increases happiness. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, choose thoughts that knit your heart together, rather than tear it apart.

20. Really truly: Is this what I want to be doing?
It's been several seconds since you asked this. Ask it again. Not to make yourself petulant or frustrated—just to see if it's possible to choose anything, and I mean any little thing, that would make your present experience more delightful. Thus continues the revolution.

My Name Is Prince.. And I Am More Than Funky!

I just got my Rolling Stone online in my email box and I was almost in tears. The "cover" story includes highlights of the first Prince show from the "Welcome 2 America" tour. That set list had my heart a-flutter.. literally. I just said to a friend, if I had a time machine and could go back.. beg my husband to let me go (that would mean him with the kiddo for a day or so), get tickets and go by myself if I had to.. meet friends I haven't met yet and have the time of my life. I swear I could die happy after seeing this show. I cannot get over it.

POSTED: December 16, 9:09 AM EDT | By Rob Sheffield

Prince's Night of Divinely Inspired Madness

Every now and then, Prince decides to try being a normal rock star. You know, the kind who does a professional arena tour where he plays the hits. But part of what makes him such an eternally fascinating star is that he lives in his own private purple world, even when he sets out to make the house quake. He never surrenders his fundamental weirdness. Like his Minnesota homie Bob Dylan, he knows in his heart that nobody wants a standard greatest-hits revue — the mystique is that on any given night, he might bust out anything.
 
"Anything" is exactly what he delivered last night, on the opening gig of his rabidly anticipated Welcome 2 America tour, at New Jersey's Izod Center. He had the crowd panting as soon as he hit the stage, rocking a seriously cool black leather trench coat and glitter in his hair. He blazed away on guitar to his new theme song, "Laydown," featuring the immortal words, "From the heart of Minnesota / Here comes the purple Yoda!" At that point, all the crowd wanted was more Prince. So naturally, he fled the stage to make his three backup singers handle the next song by themselves. (They failed.) He's a weird guy, all right.

His voice, guitar, and dance moves kept astonishing. He wailed "The Beautiful Ones" at the piano, as a ballerina in a feathery tutu came onstage to piroutte all around him. "U Got the Look" was an ass-flattening funk jam, featuring a Chuck Berry-style guitar break. He came out in red pajamas to kick off the encore with "Kiss," playing with the lyrics to sing, "You don't have to watch 'The L Word' to have an attitude!" The night ended with a master jam mixing snippets of cult-fave deep cuts — "Controversy," "Sexy Dancer," "Housequake" — along with Chic's "Le Freak." His Purple Majesty was in a remarkably outgoing mood. During "If I Was Your Girlfriend," he even asked the audience to wave their cellphones in the air — and this from the high-strung artist who famously used to ban cellphones at his concerts. But he did all the crowd-pleasing gestures — asking fans to sing along, calling for hands in the air — while shying away from his crowd-pleasing songs. It didn't always work. After saying he wanted to kick it "old school," he abandoned "Uptown" after one verse, then did the same thing to "Raspberry Beret." But a little later, he left the stage again as his backup singers did an interminable version of Sarah McLachlan's "Angel." (As a Lilith Fair nostalgia move, this couldn't hold a candle to his 1996 cover of Joan Osborne's "One of Us.")

The undeniable highlight came at the end of the main set when he torched up "Adore," the slow-burning seven-minute climax from Sign O' the Times. Not only did he do the song all the way through, he did it to death. He let the audience carry the whole first verse, then stepped to the piano, visibly blinking back tears (in the spotlight, of course). He was writhing on top of the piano by the second verse, inviting his girl to burn up his clothes and "smash up my Bentley," then seguing into an extended guitar rumination on "Purple Rain." It was unbelievably great. Do you go to a Prince show for predictable consistency? Ah, no. You go for moments of divinely inspired madness — and last night, he delivered as many of those as a fan could expect.

Set List
 
"Laydown"

"Black Muse"

"The Beautiful Ones"

Medley: "Uptown" / "Raspberry Beret" / "Cream" Medley: "Cool" / "Let's Work" "U Got The Look"

"Shhh" "Angel" (Sarah McLachlan cover)

"Nothing Compares 2 U"

"She's Always In My Hair"

"If I Was Your Girlfriend"

"Insatiable"

"Scandalous"

"Adore"

"Purple Rain"

Encore
"Kiss"

"Sometimes It Snows In April"

"Diamonds And Pearls"

Medley: "All The Critics Love U In New York" / "Controversy" / "Sexy Dancer" / "Le Freak" (Chic cover) / "Housequake"

NaBloPoMo?

Did I mention how hard it is to write every day?

This weekend was crazy. Started out awesome.. great Friday, beautiful weather, etc., etc. Things were going my way. The universe seemed to like me. I was looking ahead to a scheduled, but not so busy weekend. I should have recognized the trap.

I scheduled our Holiday picture photo shoot early this year, like this weekend. I was very proud of myself, calling to get the appointment at the time close to what I wanted at one of the studios close to where we live (versus the 25 minute drive to the mall in the 'burbs). It was all set. I knew what we were all wearing, told the husband, everything was a go.

Saturday morning comes. We are all tired, but in good spirits. Got dressed as if we're going to a Christmas ball and head over to the studio. "We have a breakdown," my husband tells me as I step out of the elevator (we took separate cars due to more of my brilliant planning to get Jackie home for her nap on time). I was perplexed. A breakdown? What could have happened?

"We have you down for tomorrow morning," the manager says. TOMORROW? WHAT? The Universe had turned its back on me.

Come to find out either someone told me the wrong day or my mind played a trick on me once again and I THOUGHT she said Saturday, but it was indeed Sunday. There was no place to fit us in, no cancellations. Oh, one while we were standing there, but at noon. No can do.

Both mornings of my weekend were basically screwed now. I would miss running one of those days due to this craziness not to mention attempting to sleep in. Plus, we were risking Jackie being in a bad mood the next day. I wish I hadn't thought it.

We get thru Saturday, have a good date night (but not such a good movie) and do it all over again Sunday morning--same outfits and all.

I was ready for a good shoot; tried to put things in perspective that we were doing this WAY early so we'd have December to relax, or at least not rush.. or at least not have something else to do.

Ended up the photographer that I was promised wasn't that great. This "manager-type person" supposedly got promoted from the other studio because she was so great. Really? I know it's early on a Sunday and I know your other manager gave me a $50 credit for the problems yesterday, but can you have some personality for my daughter? How about not making me do all the work to get her to smile. I thought we were paying YOU to do that job. Oh, and how about having props that weren't damaged so the pictures would look somewhat professional?

Thankfully we got a few good shots so we could make our Holiday cards elsewhere, but they basically lost over $100 from us due to all these issues. Look, I take responsibility that I may have, probably, made the mistake about the day, but there's no excuse for a child photographer to not have a personality and to make our session not-so-fun.

Luckily that was our last session of our membership so we really made out well on the package, along with the credit I received, but this is why I did NOT want to go to this studio. I should have gone with my gut.

The good news? Our holiday cards are ordered and should be here in a week. I wonder if I'll beat my record of getting our cards out before December 1?

Either way, is that a good excuse on why I didn't write over the past couple days? It should be :)